


The Pilgrim

by tacomuerte



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Slice of Life, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 05:46:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6841396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tacomuerte/pseuds/tacomuerte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonard Snart has come unstuck in time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pilgrim

All this happened, more or less.

Listen: Leonard Snart has come unstuck in time. Len has gone to sleep fresh off a heist with Mick watching over him and woken up on the day his father went to prison. He has walked through a door in the Waverider and come out in the living room of the West residence. He has gone back through that door to find himself in his childhood home where his baby sister is nursing a broken arm because she didn’t get Dad a beer fast enough during that second time he was out on parole. Len has seen his own birth and death many times. 

He is smart enough not to talk about these things with his sister or the few people he calls his friends, not even when he’s in a time after the particle accelerator explosion changed so many things. What could they do anyway?

He does not control when or where he goes in time. It is rarely what he would describe as fun, but that is the price he pays for the life he’s led.

The part Len really hates is thinking he might change some part of it for the better, but he never acts on that thought. He tried it once. Didn’t work. The lack of payoff soured him on trying. 

That isn’t true. 

He hates that it isn’t true, so he keeps up the pretense for himself.

The truth is he wouldn’t change it. None of it. If he did, he may not have been there to put an icicle through Dear Old Dad’s chest before the man could activate the bomb he put in Lisa’s head, or maybe he wouldn’t be there at the Oculus at the right time leaving that annoying Boy Scout or Mick or even Sara to take the fall. So it goes.

Len hates that it’s not cynicism keeping him from trying to fix that fiasco at the Oculus. If he did, he risks the possibility it’s not him being pulled apart molecule by molecule before waking up in another time, another place. 

That’s what he really hates. How much he cares about the people he respects. 

What he should care about is the next job where he proves once again that he’s ten times the criminal Dad could ever dream of being. Or maybe he should care about proving that his wits and a cold-gun can beat out The Fastest Man Alive.

And once upon a time, those were the things he cared about. Or at least that’s what he would say if he allowed himself to consider it.

But what Len really cares about is having someone to trust. He loves Lisa, but his sister can only stand being around her big brother for so long before she bolts. Too much time together, and she eventually thinks about her teenage years spent in Dad’s tender care after he got out of prison. Len was in juvie at the time getting acquainted with his first real taste of failure. 

To be clear, the failure isn’t getting caught. It’s not the fights. It’s not having to prove himself to the other punks.

No. Len isn’t there for Lisa when it’s the worst time of her life. They never talk about it. She leaves before it gets to that every time, off to seek some cheap thrill by taking the most dangerous jobs she can find.

It’s okay if she doesn’t want to relive those years. Len doesn’t want to talk about it either. He does what he can to look after Lisa, but he has to let her live her own life.

Same with Mick. He never asks Mick why the older boy saves him that first night after the’ve met, but it’s good to have someone to watch out for him for a change. That’s what they do for each other.

That’s why Len suckerpunches Mick and leaves him marooned. Never occurred to him at the time that the Time Masters would show up and torture Mick, turning him into one of their foot soldiers. But they do. So it goes.

After the rest of the crew finds out and Mick takes his place back on the Waverider, things change. Mick doesn’t want Len looking out for him, not that Len blames him really. Trust is fragile. Once it breaks, you don’t get to put it back together.

Except they do. Somehow. When Len’s honest with himself, he knows it wouldn’t have happened without Sara. The others on the Waverider always want to talk things out instead of giving the problem a bit of time to work itself out in its own way.

They love to talk. Dad does, too. He always talks about how everything’s going to be different this time. Talk, Len knows, is cheap.

Sara is different, though. She doesn’t want to talk about the things she’s done that makes her feel hollow and empty. Neither does Len. They just play cards and flirt. That’s fine. Len doesn’t need anything physical. He isn’t sure he wants anything like that.

Len just wants someone he can trust and who trusts him. Lisa never could after Dad got through beating her for two years while Len’s stuck in juvie. Mick does until Len has to take matters into his own hands to save the big idiot from his own worst tendencies. Lisa and Mick need to have their trust validated, and Len fails both times.

Sara doesn’t need or want that kind of trust. She’s that rare soul who understands that sometimes you trust someone who maybe seems like he’s betraying you, but is just doing what he can to look out for you.

During those weeks where Mick is missing and after he returns as Chronos, Sara keeps Len sane. Twice he even falls asleep playing cards, and she stays watching over him. They don’t talk about that either. 

He wonders sometimes if he could have something like that with the Flash. Barry’s a standup guy. That’s why Len hates him, or wants to hate him anyway. Too trusting. Always wanting to see the good in everyone even if they don’t deserve it. Len doesn’t. He knows that. Just one look at Lisa’s face and he knows. It’s the same look Mick has for a brief moment before the rage takes over upon waking after Len clocks him from behind.

But Len is glad that some of his trips through time let him match wits with Barry… just as he’s glad to experience the surge of adrenaline as he and Mick knock over a bank… just as he’s glad to feel like a decent guy he never wants to admit to being when he’s on a mission with the Waverider crew… just as he’s glad he can sit in a bunk with Sara and see which of them can throw the other off their game with a glance or a brush of hands as they gather up the cards…

Len wonders if someday he’ll stop moving through moments of his life and come out somewhere new at some new time he’s not experienced before. Maybe. If he had the chance to bet, he would put his money on that. Len feels that he’s still got some sort of role to play in things to come. He hopes that he’ll be beside Mick and Sara or maybe even the Flash. He fears he’ll be on his own with no one to watch while he sleeps. 

In the meantime, he’s standing beside his best friend in a dive bar in the 70’s with Captain and Tennille blasting out of a jukebox, and they’re about to watch Sara crack some skulls. 

So it goes.

**Author's Note:**

> For asimaiyat.


End file.
